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11/6/26: M4A! NO Israel Aid! Trump District Dems SHOCK Establishment, Schumer, Jeffries ON THE ROPES w/ David Sirota, Jeffries SOFT On Trump Investigations, Stocks Plummet, PANIC After Blue Nuke

2h 8m 34s

11/6/26: M4A! NO Israel Aid! Trump District Dems SHOCK Establishment, Schumer, Jeffries ON THE ROPES w/ David Sirota, Jeffries SOFT On Trump Investigations, Stocks Plummet, PANIC After Blue Nuke

The 2026 U.S. midterms marked a seismic shift in American politics, with progressive, economically populist candidates winning in deeply red districts. These new lawmakers—many unconnected to traditional party machinery—emphasized affordability, anti-oligarch policies, and universal healthcare, rejecting centrist or establishment narratives. Key victories in states like Texas, Tennessee, and Ohio reflect a broad rejection of wealth-driven politics and a demand for tangible change. Notably, candidates like Chuck Hubbard, Lakeisha Womack, and Don Leonard are pushing for Medicare for All, ending U.S. military support for Israel, and challenging elite power structures. The wave also exposed serious issues in media credibility, as reports about high-profile events were questioned due to AI-generated imagery and lack of verification. Meanwhile, political institutions are being reshaped: Democrats gained 258 seats, breaking 11 Republican trifectas, and new leaders like Greta Neubauer signal a transformation in climate and social policy. The rise of grassroots, issue-based candidates reflects a broader political realignment, where voter demands for economic justice and accountability are redefining party platforms. Even as the Democratic Party faces internal tensions over leadership and policy, the momentum suggests a new era of democratic engagement—one driven by public sentiment, not party loyalty.

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Proud partner of the iHeart Podcast Network. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com. Had a busy day? Don't have time to listen to the show? Catch up on Breaking Points with our free daily newsletter. You'll get our breakdown of every daily story. And lots of links in your inbox every day. So head over to BreakingPoints.com. You can sign up for the newsletter at the top for free today. Hello, hello. It is Friday, November 6th, Breaking Points Friday, and it is a brand new world. I'm joined here with Crystal and Ryan, but we're missing Emily today. The route has spread even to Breaking Points. It's taken a toll on our conservative comrades. Emily was sitting in an R-plus 19 seat. She didn't see it coming. Yes, the blue nami came and now Emily has been carted to the blue logs where she will be forced to do lip syncs, with Sarah Cooper doing Trump lip syncs and giving five-star reviews of, yes. Yes, she's getting transed right now with the pink frog chemicals at the re-education camps, but it's okay. She'll be back. We told them to take it easy on her, so it'll be fine. Yeah, she's not allowed out until she leaves five-star reviews on Amazon for every trans children's book. So we wish her the best in all of that. But yeah. I do have a request for the show. I thought we should do the show this morning, guys, if you don't mind. The sort of energy that we bring to the show today. I thought maybe, I thought maybe we could do it with a little bit of joy, a little bit of enthusiasm, and a little bit of stick it to them. Because that's the Breaking Points way. Did you go out and find that? Or did you already own that? I bought it, yeah, I did. I was like, I don't care that Halloween's over. This is too good. By next year, everyone will have forgotten, but I'll still have this. I'll still remember. We're doing it for the Michiganders, Crystal. What do you think about Hisham Piker and The Uncle? What do you think about The Uncle? She wrote another long diatribe on Twitter, and everyone's like, who even are you? Just go away. We're not reading this. Your moment has passed. Good luck with your life. The last one was AI. You don't get to do another one. What's that? Her last little essay was AI. Oh, was it really? We're not reading a second AI essay. I think they've all been AI. Yeah, they've all been AI, for sure. That's a good segue into our little AI update here. Fashion AI update. Oh, yes, absolutely. The most important thing that we have to break down here at the top of the show is our number one intrepid friend of the show reporter, Olivia Rheingold, who had the most breaking urgent news post-midterms, which is that— And shout out to her, because you know she's definitely watching right now. Yes, Olivia. Olivia, respond to my DMs. She's taking a break from Hassan's stream to watch us. So Olivia says, So far at Abdullah Say's election night event, I've spotted Valentino heels, a Chanel bag, a Moncler jacket, Rolex watches, and a YSL bag, among other designer items. I like this accent, bro. It's my fashion show accent. Now, people had some questions about this image, didn't they, Ryan? They did. They were like, hmm, this looks fake. Well, the funny thing is, right, you actually brought this up when we were streaming, and you were like, she had to immediately actually edit her own tweet, because she says there it's at an Abdul event, and then she had to immediately be like, well, it's actually just brought a Democratic Party. Right, yes. That part was just completely wrong. And the whole point of it being a gotcha would be that it's at a Abdul event, specifically. Right. Because he's the— He's the lefty candidate, and here are the people with the Chanel bags, and boom, we've got them. And then, yeah, she had to do a reply that said, clarification, this is actually a broader Democratic Party, you know, writ large event. Which is like, Abdul never said that there aren't still a couple of Democrats with disposable money that they spend on Chanel bags, fake or not. So it really did undermine the whole gotcha that she thought she had. And then people were like, oh, also, that photo doesn't look— Yeah, so the Vanity Fair people were like, wait a second, I've never seen that kind of Chanel bag. Wait a second, those shoes, what are they supposed to be, Valentino shoes? Is that what it is? Those shoes really look a little off. They don't have—the buckles are not the way those shoes—because it's like a very famous designer shoe. And so then they ran it through an AI analysis, and it was like, yep, this is AI. So we've got an Olivia update. We've got an Olivia update, though, claiming that she just used AI to clarify the image, but that this is actually still a real photo. Are you guys buying this? She says, Hello, my name is Olivia Rangold. I use ChatGPT to brighten and sharpen an image of a woman in Valentino shoes and a Chanel bag. After processing, it still shows these same things, a woman wearing Valentino shoes and a Chanel bag. She is a real and chic woman really wearing those items. The observation holds. Here's the photo I took. And, you know— Now, this is the reporter who, for the free press, went out and, you know, investigated the famine and concluded that the children that were dying of starvation also had preexisting conditions ahead of time. And so, therefore, you know, this was propaganda. Producer MJ and I, you know, looked into her reporting on that. And one thing that just has stuck with me the whole time, one, she never tried to contact a single woman. Child that she wrote about or a single family member. No reporting whatsoever. Just Googling. And she said she investigated 12 cases of children. They weren't all children. Some were adults. And we—MJ and I counted it, like, over and over and over again. There aren't 12. Like, her headline says, we looked at 12 cases. How many did it add up to? It was 10, but you could very generously say 11 because she alludes to it. The one alludes to, like, an 11th one. But 10, which is neither here nor there. Maybe her entire premise could still be correct and she just can't count. But, like, the premise was also wrong. There was no reporting. It was completely, gratuitously cruel. Because it's like, of course, the children with preexisting conditions are going to be the first ones who are dying in a famine. Like, anybody— Even if they have Chanel shoes. You don't have to go to medical school to know that. Like, that is obvious. But then she couldn't—also couldn't count the 12. And her editors care so little about her and her journalism that the copy editor, the line editor, the editor that posted it, none of them were like, Hey, Olivia, your headline says you did 12 cases. There's not 12 here. Like, nobody cares over there. They don't care. A lot of people thought she'd get fired. So, of course, they're defending her. They're like, oh, so what? So she used AI to touch. Touch up this photo. Jasper was pointing out to—remember this one? I'd forgotten about this. Oh, yes. She went to this Abdu'l-Sayed event. And she said, you know, that he said something and narrowed his eyes when he was answering a question about Israel. And clearly trying to make it seem like, oh, this is, like, sinister and he just hates Israel. And by extension, he hates the Jews. Well, I mean, then video came out and people were like, literally, what are you talking about? It was, you know, completely— Wait, they put Jafar in the image. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's insane. And so, and it was, I mean, so clearly she had a thing she wanted to convey about him. It turned out his answer was, like, fine. So she had to make it feel nefarious some other way. And so this is what she came up with. Like, this is the reporting that's going on over there is her, like— inventing things that literally did not happen to try to make the point that she wants to make and people said oh the ai she's done for now because you know uh free press is part of uh this larger media organization now that has higher standards than this free press blog so maybe the editors are going to crack down on her but no the editor or one of the head people at free press replied and was like come for the queen you best not miss so really really good stuff going over there i just i just don't think this is the michigan way in my opinion i don't think that's what michiganders like um it's not we're about but we're about a lot of other things today than just our favorite reporter uh we are going to be breaking down more of these post midterm results and some crazy stats about the early votes in states like with talarico who got more votes in the early than ken paxton did in the entire general race uh we're also going to be looking at the the bubbling fight over chuck schumer as senate majority leader he says he's not going anywhere other people have other thoughts then we're going to have our friend david serota david serota from the famous rap song david serota joining to talk about uh what the left should do now and corruption investigations from robert garcia and finally don't look at the nasdaq don't look at your 401ks the ai bubble is potentially popping up in the next couple of weeks and i'm going to be talking about potentially popping as the ai industry scrambles with the new democratic leadership but crystal i think we wanted to start with a little bit of zoron who came out right after the midterms and had this message to say why don't we just take a listen to him first last night's election proved working people expect more from their government and they're tired of waiting jd vance asked for a couple more years to finally fulfill the promises he'd made to our country working people can't afford another two years to make rent that's due this month child care for their kids or groceries for their family people are tired of being told that there isn't enough to go around while elon musk becomes the world's first trillionaire they are tired of being told to sacrifice their land and water for data centers they're tired of being told their needs are unrealistic by politicians who've been bought by the wealthiest people on the planet they're tired of being told to ask for a little and expect even less and last night the people stood up they stood up to politicians that spend their taxpayer dollars on war crimes and genocide instead of on building schools and paving roads they spoke louder than the hundreds of millions of dollars that tried and failed to buy the demanded an end to the affordability crisis that has become one of the few things that unites us all it is not enough to simply win power we must use and the american people will know the difference between hollow words and hard work for years we've had the debate now it's time for us in the democratic party to deliver my friends it's morning again in america all right so crystal you made the point that this midterm in a lot of ways was zoron mamdani's midterm and now he's coming out of the gate strong telling democrats what's to do next what do you make of all that yeah it's like if zoron and bernie 2016 had a baby it um you know that's what this these midterms birthed because you know i was so zoron gave democrats their specific messaging around affordability and there were analyses that were done and after he came from one percent in the polls to win the primary and then have andrew cuomo still stay in the race and switch to independent and run against him again and he unseats this long time multi-generational dynasty political family in new york they looked at that and said you know what affordability was a pretty good message now zoron had of course his specific deliverables that he was repeating over and over the fast and free buses the free child care you know the the rent freeze like he had his thing and they really just picked up the affordability piece and you saw mikey shero run with it you saw abigail spanberger run with it both win easily by double digits you know total white bounce in virginia and new jersey really presaging what we saw in the midterms this week and so democrats recognize okay this is the thing to hammer home over and over and over again so even though you had candidates running you know across the country very different ideologies in some ways very different places of course they were running in there was this common thread running through and so you know i was all prepared for after uh abdul's victory like okay i want to get in the trenches and fight over like well this is why his performance is so impressive given all the hate that he faced the under running against the republicans and the media and the democrats and his own former primary opponent i don't have to make that case because you go and listen to james talarico you go and listen to um to annie andrews you go and listen to virtually any of these candidates across the country they sound like a combination of bernie and soran economic populism one um gina hinojosa is so right when she says talking about who did the best or how this all worked in a left-right dynamic doesn't even make sense for what just happened uh and we're going to talk about that in a little bit but i'm going to talk about that in a little bit and we're going to get to that more with some of the the candidates that weren't even on our radar who just won who again are going to be representing these r plus 20 districts in some certain instances who are talking about the millionaires they're talking about the oligarchs they're talking about top versus bottom they're talking about delivering material for people and they're also talking about ending the war that was obviously really central rallying cry here as well so i just think you know for me it's very exciting because it's the politics that i've been pushing for for a long time and i think it's a really important thing and i think it's a really important we're going to talk about you know the challenges now of actually having to govern i hope they learn lessons from zoron on that front as well because that man has been on it delivering delivering delivering messaging about it communicating how he's delivering for people every single day they need to do the same they also need to hold you know the criminals accountable and have justice as well as the material delivery but the idea that the party that the democratic party is centered around economic issues and then there's some grace for there's some bandwidth for okay you're in mississippi scott cologne who also talks of all about the billionaires yeah you can be pro 2a you can be pro-life you can you know you can moderate on cultural issues the litmus test is going to be on are you standing up to the oligarchs are you standing up to the entrenched interests and we now have a glimpse of a party that's doing that and it's a party that can compete in literally any state in the entire freaking country the other thing i liked about this is that the party that's doing that is the party that's doing that is the party that's doing that it came while matt iglesias and some of the other kind of centrist pundits out there have been just relentlessly parsing all of this voting data to to squint to try to make this like yes really boring case that actually the hayley stevens-like candidates performed better than if she had won the primary his theory is she would have performed better but the ones who did make it through as centrist performed better look at you know look at roy cooper look you know just just an endless like you know charts and bar graphs and i even like regrettably like participated in it briefly and to mamdani's point is a key one who cares like now it's it's time to deliver and the left argument at least the smart one has always been okay maybe there's some you know political science is a bit of a quackery anyway but within the confines of political science there is some data that shows that moderate candidates outperform uh more progressive candidates by a point or two points in in swing districts fine but if the party as a whole was just driven by the centrists every time they get into power they get washed right back out out again because everybody gets frustrated that they don't do anything so what mamdani is saying is all right now now we have power now it's time to deliver it doesn't matter what the theories tell you about neoliberalism or socialism or anything else the question is are you going to make people's lives better and and if you are then you're going to deliver for them and they're going to and that's going to build a coalition of support so i like the way that he's been responding to a lot of these questions about socialism he's like i'm the mayor now like am i going to make the buses free or not like that and are people going to like that or not like that is that is the question at this point not it's like a glacius like bunch of charts i know and it just like the more that you listen to these candidates the sillier that the charts become right you know i mean annie andrews we're all discovering this lady like she is it's like we elected jennifer welsh to senate from south carolina like jennifer welsh now represents in south carolina it is wild you know and obviously on the campaign trail the things she was emphasizing were very similar to what abdul or scott cologne in mississippi or james talarico or john ossoff were emphasizing it was a class rhetoric you know they talk all of them talk about the billionaires i looked up roy cooper roy cooper was talking about the billionaires you know he was talking about money in politics because they had a specific um court case that went against them in the state of north carolina with regard to the billionaires and they were money in politics so you you you really did have this sort of unifying message and theme and then you couple that with obviously trump just being such an undeniable disaster and there was a deep desire among the american people to say screw you and i do think and saga really hit on this You know, we look at Dan Osborne underperforms the other independents that thought the Democratic Party brand is too toxic in my state, in Idaho, in Montana. That's an interesting case because you have Sam Forstack from Montana who ran as a Democrat and won as a Democrat. Yeah, I think they underperformed because, first of all, it felt like a bit of an authenticity issue. Osborne in particular, with the leaks that came out, it's like, oh, you're kind of hiding the ball on what you're really all about here. And second of all, it's not that the Democratic Party is popular, but voting for a straight ticket Democrat felt like the biggest rebellion you could do. It felt like the most aggressive way to say screw you to the insanity that has been coming out of the Trump regime. And so I think that's a lot of why you saw, you know, the Democrat, the actual Democrats, not the independents, perform so well, even in states where we would have thought they had no business competing. And it just really shows you everything in politics is up for grabs. The minute you think you're in one paradigm and this is how things are, you know, whether it's the Obama coalition or whether it's the Trump coalition or whether it's the post-2024 Trump vibes or whether it's the fact that, oh, we live in this 50-50 country and it's just going to be so evenly divided forever. It's all up for grabs. It's all up on the table. Nothing, including the states that are the blue states or the red states or the purple states or whatever. None of that is static. You know, I'm here in Virginia. It's not long ago when I was running in 2010, Virginia was still a red state. It was still like, oh, my God, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine can win here. But that's basically it statewide. Now, forget about it. Virginia is, you know, as blue as it comes, at least for now. But that can change in the future, too. So today, Mississippi is like, oh, my God, I can't believe Democrats won it. Who knows? In 10 years, it might be like, well, of course, Democrats won it. It's a blue state now. That's the way that our politics go. Look in the Rio Grande Valley. You know, those voters have shifted back and forth more than anyone. Like Sky, what's his name? Bobby. Who just won his seat in that area. That was like a Trump plus 16 seat. And he won it. He won by like 20 points. It was the biggest shift in the country was like a 43 point shift towards him. And that was an area of the country that swang swang dramatically. Another if you look at the maps of where the biggest shifts were, another state where there was a massive shift was actually West Virginia. Now, it wasn't enough to oust Shelley Moore Capito because it was such a deep red seat. But that's a place that are in. Oh, this is the epicenter of Republicanism. This is the epicenter of Trump country. This is MAGA world. There's no going back. You're never going to be able to pull these voters away. Well, they just had some of the biggest shifts in the entire country. So you can't take anything for granted. You have to deliver for people. You have to fight for people. You have to meet them where they are and really listen to their concerns and, you know, try to try to hear them out. And now, to your point, Ryan, now they have to deliver. And that's the hardest part. That is where the right. And, you know, you may be losing New York or Virginia or who knows next because it's all on the table now. Yeah. We mentioned Tallarico. So it's we got to pull up this crazy stat here about Tallarico's early vote. James Tallarico received more early votes than Pacton received in total. That means that if no one voted on Election Day, if not a single person came into the booth and that he still would have won, which is just such a mind blowing statistic in a state like Texas. I mean, my friends called me from Austin on election night and it sounded in Austin like we just won World War Two. Like it was just such a crazy, ecstatic commotion. Totally unbelievable. And I think there's another point with Tallarico in terms of something that they're taking from Mamdani, which is potentially working with Trump, who is now going to be an extreme lame duck, the lamest duck that's ever existed, because Tallarico said he's willing to work with Trump on building a million homes. And I also wanted to play this clip from Bernie Sanders, who thinks that Trump may work with them on some issues. Let me play a little bit of that right here. Be careful. They know the current system is broken and incredibly expensive. If that's what the American people want, let's do it. Let's not end up paying twice as much per capita, health care as the people of other countries. Now, if Trump wants to veto it, that is his constitutional right. I'm not so sure, by the way, that he will, because Medicare for all is extremely popular when it comes to taxing billionaires so that we can fund the needs of low income and working families. You know what? Our job is to do what the American people want and need. Trump can do what he wants. But Trump is a funny guy. You know, I don't think he's all that ideological. I think he's a politician, and I'm not so sure that he will react all that negatively to a progressive agenda, believe it or not. Ryan, what do you make of that? This sense that Dems could somehow convince Trump to, you know, pass some legislation? He he also was on Chris Hayes last night, and it was like the giddiest I've ever seen Bernie ever. The whole the whole Chris Hayes interview is worth a watch. I mean, why not? Like, who knows? I it's certainly possible. His his quote on Chris Hayes about Trump was Trump is crazy, but he's not stupid like that. That was. That was, I thought, an interesting way to put it. He said he recognizes that, you know, his broader point was he recognizes that the health care system is broken and that maybe you can call it Trump care. During the first Trump administration, it was reported that Trump even floated when they were trying to repeal the ACA. He said, Why don't we just do Medicare for all? And Paul Ryan was like, Yeah, that's an interesting idea. Let's table that talk for now. Like, to Bernie's point, he's not ideological. My argument for the Democrats would be promise him the ballroom. You know what? Boom. Everybody hates the ballroom. We hate the ballroom. We're going to destroy the ballroom the second that you're out of this White House. Instead, how about you can spend the whole next two years working on the ballroom? We'll appropriate funds for it. We'll even promise not to knock it down. In exchange, we get Medicare for all. We get the Medicaid cuts rescinded. And then either now you can pay for it with the by repealing the tax cuts or you repeal the tax cuts in twenty twenty nine when it's like President Warnock or whatever. Yeah. But I think there is an insane amount of stuff that Trump. Would do to get that ballroom to get to just to have a hassle free ballroom like he's going to do it anyway. But to be able to just wake up whenever he wants and just, you know, saunter through it and think about the sconces and the marble and, you know, like just to like be able to focus on that for his final two years. I think he'd give Democrats whatever they wanted. Personally, I prefer this plan that I saw on Twitter. Pass. The the the the Senate. Send Abdul to the Oval Office to meet with Trump. Trump can examine his body and his ass and his bicep and fall completely in love with him. Abdul then tells Trump if he signs a bill, we can call it Trump care like Obamacare, but better. He can take credit. Statues will be built in his honor. Trump says, OK, Abdul, I'll do it. And we get a right there. Like, yes, like Abdul, like carries it to the White House. I love it with a pen. Like, here's your credit. So, look, I mean, I don't think any of that is particularly likely. But the truth of the matter is you should behave the same whether it's likely or not, because the worst thing that happens is you pass Medicare for all through the House and the Senate. It you know, and then he has to be the guy that's blocking universal health care. And then Democrats get to say, like, look, give us the presidency. We'll actually do this thing that you all want done. So the way that you behave is the same, really. Whether or not you think Trump is going to go along with you or not. And there's a lot of things. I mean, Medicare for all is one. But there are other things, too, that will really put political pressure on him. And he may not really care anymore because he's out of there, but it's going to make it very difficult for J.D. Vance or wherever the Republican is moving forward. If you know if they pass, OK, we're going to get rid of these Medicaid cuts that are going to devastate rural hospitals and devastate rural America in particular. Here's the bill. What are you going to do with it? You know, if you. Those are the ACA subsidies that were cut. Right. The ACA premiums, everybody's dealing right now, getting their letters in the mail, showing them how much their premiums are about to go up. It's once again an astronomical increase. OK, we're passing the ACA subsidies. We're getting you know, we're getting those back in. Here it is. Are you going to sign it or not? Make it clear who is standing in the way. And, you know, best case scenario, he actually just says, OK, you know, I think I'll secure my legacy by working with Democrats and actually doing these things. But Ryan, do you want to update us on where is the fight with the defunding of the Iran war? Because that has to be priority number one, given the demand to not I can't even call it a mandate, the absolute demand that has been issued from the American people. From both sides, even all the Republicans are coming out and saying it now. The nicest thing to see has been like people like Will Chamberlain, who were, you know, far right guys who were hardcore supporters of the war. saying like, you know what? In a perfect world where we could be divorced from the political consequences of this, I still think it's a good idea to attack Iran and we should keep attacking Iran until the threat is completely eliminated. But that's not the world we live in. The voters have spoken. They don't like the consequences of this war. So therefore, we have to end it. It's like, okay, all right. I'll take it. Matt Walsh said something similar. He said, what's the point? He's like, I'd rather have Iran have a nuke than us be run by communists. And he was against the war from the beginning. But yeah, like a lot of people on the right are saying that, like, this is not worth the cost. The voters have said they don't. Can I get the future where Iran has a nuke and we get run by communists? Yes, I think you're going to get, you might get that future. Everyone gets a nuke under communism. The communists will be Chinese, but that's a separate story. So. Chris Van Hollen and Ro Khanna have said that the continuing resolution that is needed to fund the government on or before December 11th is the place to fight this, to end the Iran war. And I think it was Ro Khanna was pointing out that that's how the Vietnam War was technically and officially ended, that there was a CR and in the CR they wrote, no money can be used, no federal money can be used to prosecute the war in North Korea. Yeah, it was a CR and in the CR they wrote, no money can be used to prosecute the war in North Korea. South Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, or anywhere else, like they spelled it out and they made it very broad so they couldn't like find some other country to do some, some more nearby end. But it was like two sentences. That's it. And so Van Hollen and Khanna are saying, all right, so put this in and just, just be done with it so that there's, the option is not on the table for Trump to renew the war. This week, all of these different kind of NGO anti-war civil society groups have been debating how hard to put. Push Democrats on this question. And I obtained a draft letter that was going around, which had a line that said, basically, we need to focus on the defense appropriation bills and authorizations. And if Trump decides to wage the war, we need to be ready in January to come in with bills that specifically defund the war. After I reached out to some of these groups who had signed on to the draft letter, they're like, okay, yeah, I can understand. Why you'd be writing about this, because that does seem to suggest we're okay with war in November, December. That's not what we mean. And so they took that line out of the letter. And so the anti-war groups are quote unquote anti-war. They're, they are kind of regrouping and going to put more pressure. And a lot of the groups that signed that letter told me, they're like, no, we're with Van Hollen and we're with Khanna on this. Like use all the tools at your disposal. But it's some of the groups are not there yet. And they need to, I think, I guess they need some time to understand. Understand what happened on Tuesday. Like there, there is this weird kind of deference that so many of these nonprofit groups inside Washington, D.C. have for the security state that they, that they want to kind of advise them on the, on the most responsible way to use force. But they're, they're not, a lot of them just are not used to saying, no, end the war right now. Yeah. And it's like, well, that's what the voters want. So that's what you're going to have to demand. It's funny too, you know, we interviewed Roe yesterday and he's like, well, we have all these demands for Hakeem Jeffries. And I was like, okay, and if he doesn't meet them, are you going to not vote for him? And he's like, well, we think he's going to meet them. You know, there's still this very, like, I think that there is going to be a major shaking up of the Democratic Party caucus. Because a lot of the people that are coming in and we can pull up, you know, some of them and what they're telling reporters, because everyone's like, wait a second, who are these people? Like, where did they came from? They're brand zero, you know, ads, had no fundraising. And now they're unseating longtime Republican incumbents in extremely conservative areas. Who are they? What are they all about? And so many of them are like, no, I'm not voting for Hakeem Jeffries until we change the relationship with Israel and the Iran war. I need guarantees before. You know, it's just there's for them there. They feel totally free to just say whatever they want to say. They're not hemmed in yet by sort of like the rules and the relationships. And Washington and oh, my God, what about my committee? And, you know, what about the fundraising that drawing like they're just there's none of that is there. Many of these people are just like pissed off that base Democrats who saw that this no one was really running for these seats and was like, I guess I'm going to run and see what happens. And now they're going to Washington. So you have this really wild dynamic where some people who unseated these long term incumbents in really red districts. Sound not dissimilar from, you know, from Abdul, from they don't identify as DSA, but they are quite progressive in a lot of the views that they're articulating. And they're completely willing to pressure Hakeem Jeffries. They don't know this guy. They've never spoken to him. He had nothing to do with their victory, with their success. So what they know is what they believe and the message that voters sent through their election. So I think there is going to be a tremendous amount. Of shaking up in Washington. It does remind very much of, you know, post Tea Party wave in 2010, where you had a similar dynamic on the right, although I think this is way beyond the wave election of 2010. But you had a similar thing of these people just coming out of the Republican base who'd never run for office before, who were like, I'm going to just run and see what happens, who then end up in Washington. And obviously there's you know, they've continued to deal with the fallout. From that Tea Party wave and the way that that upended the Republican caucus for, you know, over a decade now. And, you know, I sent me two people. I'm sorry, Ryan, do you want to go for it? Just a real interesting thought to add to that. I was getting from a kind of conservative source yesterday that they started the process of this is from their perspective, the kind of populist right perspective. They started the process of cleaning out their party and in 2010 and that and they were making significant progress. Eric Cantor threw Boehner out of the speakership. And then Trump won in 2015 and the double-edged sword of his victory was that they basically had to stop the project of cleaning out all of their establishment shills because Trump basically just brought them to heel. It's like because of the cult of Trump and loyalty to Trump, you didn't need to get rid of the people like Cindy Hyde-Smith because they were they were out of fear just going to. You know, mouth whatever they needed to needed to mouth in order to please Trump. And so what they had was this establishment party that kind of just clung to two positions of power, even though they didn't have power at the moment. So he was saying he's like, good riddance to all these people. Thank you to the Democrats. And now that people are allowed to disagree with Trump again, like the civil war is back on, like we're going to come back in and we have a list. The names of people who have been faking loyalty to to right wing populism and that when the Republican Party comes back, it's going to be the it's going to be the real deal. So that's that was an interesting version of the history. And it makes sense that like Trump did really put a lid on the entire civil war basically just by winning it. OK, so let's take a look at some of these people. Axios interviewed a few of them. I don't know if you guys have seen. Richard, is that his name? Richard Hubbard, who won in one of these North Carolina districts. Chuck, there you go. Chuck Hubbard. I got a video of him, too. I was thinking Richard because he's actually buddies with Richard Ojeda, which is amazing. I can't wait for that buddy comedy to arrive in D.C. And he beat he beat Virginia Fox and Richard Hudson used to be Virginia Fox's chief of staff. Really? I didn't know that lore. Yeah. Yes. Richard Ojeda. Congratulated him for beating Satan's meemaw, Virginia Fox. That's what he meant. Let me let me I'll bring this article back up. Let me just give you a taste of Chuck here. Hey, everybody. It's Chuck Hubbard. Just wanted to take a moment to welcome Cardi B to North Carolina from New York. She's doing a show tonight. This good Democrat is down in Raleigh at the Lenovo Center. And thank God it's not Nicki Minaj at Maga Post. I doubt she could fill up the Lenovo Center anyway. Y'all enjoy the show. I love that. There's another video of him that's gone viral where he's talking about why he ran to star with. I actually think this is his second run. But he has a lesbian daughter and he was like, I'm going to stand up and fight for her rights and the rights of everybody. And that's why I'm here and why I'm doing this. It was just very, like, earnest and very, very sweet. But, yeah, pull back the Axios article because let's let's see Victoria Broderick. So she's the one in Tennessee's fourth congressional district. Huge upset over Scott. Deja Ray, who was a doctor who was sleeping with his patients and then having them have abortions, even though he I think that happened with one. I don't want to, you know, I think it might be multiple, actually multiple. Anyway, it's a good family man, Christian values type conservative. And that's the sort of thing then in pro-life. Right. That's the sort of thing that he was engaged for life. This was a and this was an old scandal like this has been out there for a while. But now there's enough. Yeah, we broke. Go ahead, Ryan. We broke that at Huffington. We broke that at the Huffington Post and watching him survive that was one of the more demoralizing things that I've gone through in journalism. Like, because we were shifting into the Trump era, but we didn't know we were there yet. And we're like, oh, we've got this. And it was a serious investigation that took a long while to get all, get the women, get the documents, get everything nailed down. We're like, oh, we've got this guy nailed. He's a pro-life doctor who's been knocking up patients and then pressuring them into having abortions. And he's married. Like, obviously he's done. No. That was, this was like 2013 or 14 we broke that. Wow. Here we are in 2026. And finally. Finally. I think a lot of people can check. I think he lost his medical license over it, but not his job. Yeah, I think that's right. So she is pretty, Victoria, the woman who beat him, she's pretty unapologetically progressive and bragged about how she says, I'm a progressive. I ran the most progressive race they've ever had in that district. I ran on safety, affordability, freedom and equity. She supports universal health care. She says every working person deserves affordable living. And she said of Hakeem Jeffries, we're still waiting to get our feet wet and understand where we're going with everything. So I'm not going to say yes or no to that question. So she's looking for, you know, some progressive commitments from Hakeem Jeffries. Again, this is one of the, this is Tennessee we're talking about. And she raised like 40 grand, I think, was her total that she raised. And she's gay. Yes. Yes. All of that. And just unseated, you know, someone from a. Deep red district. All right. Next up, we've got our boy Chuck in North Carolina's fifth congressional district, just unseated Virginia Fox. Fox had a more than two to one spending advantage this year with one point six million in disbursements to Hubbard's seven hundred thousand respectable amount. There's seven hundred thousand political had rated the race as likely Republican. He describes himself as probably center left, saying he might rate conservative even financially. But when it comes to social issues, I probably skewed to the left. Then he goes on. To say on health care, I'm in favor for public choice in health care. You can call it universal health care. You can call it Medicare for all. So this is the guy who's describing himself as a fiscal conservative. And then he's like, and by that, I mean, I support Medicare for all on Israel. He said, we're going to have to find a way to exert some control on Netanyahu on voting for Jeffries, a speaker. He says, I have nothing against him, but I think it's unwise to say before talking to him. So not willing to support him next. We've got in North Carolina, six Cyril Jefferson. He is the mayor of High Point, North Carolina, spent just two hundred twenty five thousand dollars to McDowell Addison McDowell's one point three million. This was a district Trump carried by 16 points. He says what they kept saying was your seats just nowhere on our radar. We don't think it's going to get on our radar until something happens. He goes on to say that the fundraising part is really rough. He used to be a high school teacher and he says there are examples. Where me and progressives may not be on the same side of things. There are times when you say, hey, progressives and Cyril do seem to be aligned on something. He supports Pete Buttigieg's public option for health care on Israel. He says, I believe that the right to be a democratic Jewish state, but aid in any case going anywhere for any issue has to be conditional for Jeffries. He says, I need to sit down with him. I need to ask him some questions. I do think there are people have legitimate concerns out there about the meeting he took with Jared Kushner. He said, I can't think of anyone else who would be better for the job. But that meeting was on affordability, though. That's not fair. He was he was trying to bring down grocery prices. In North Carolina's 13th, Paul Berenger. I think this is the guy who sounds like more of kind of like your traditional blue dog type conservative. He's a lawyer, health care consultant and tree farmer. Raised a good bit of money, but neither national party got involved in the race. He's a former Republican. He says, I'm out there saying I believe in collaboration. I'm out there saying I believe in collaboration and common sense. I support business. I'm for lower taxes. He said, fiscal responsibility and reducing deficits are a huge priority on voting for Jeffries. He says, at this point, I would say I envision there will be conversations and discussion after consideration of our options. And then we've got Lakeisha Womack in North Carolina's 14th. She spent or more of the person she defeated spent nearly a million dollars on ads. Womack was hit for, I guess, some issue with like a rental car. Where she owed some money to a rental car company. She spent just $55,000 on the campaign. Does money even matter anymore? Almost two million. Let's table that conversation. I think it still matters. But the national mood is what controls more in many of these races. She says, I just have a common sense approach to solving problems for working class families on health care. I definitely support Medicare for all. On Israel aid, I think any aid we provide domestically. We're internationally should have conditions, whether we're looking at SNAP or USAID. On voting for Jeffries as speaker, I definitely want to see who the options are. And whoever is going to put forth the most progressive platform. I don't think this is a time for us to be moderate. I'm looking forward to seeing which leader is going to push us in that direction. So these are just a few of the folks who are going to be headed to D.C. And, you know, as you can see, like a lot of the views, not all, but a lot of the views are quite progressive. It's so different, Ryan, from what you would. Yeah, traditionally expected, like the type of and we'll talk to Sarota about this, the type of candidates that are Rahm Emanuel would have recruited for, you know, this very red district. It would not have been Lakeisha Womack saying, I want the most progressive agenda possible. And I am absolutely committed to Medicare for all. And there's another guy who flipped a seat in Ohio. Let me put him up here. So Don Leonard, he wrote the book Water is Life about the water war. In Cochabamba in like ninety nine two thousand, which was a very big deal at the time. And for people that are precisely my age, it was a very big deal because it happened right around the time of the Seattle WTO protests, followed by the D.C. like World Bank IMF protests. And at the same time, they were trying to privatize the water in in the in the in Cochabamba, which is the like the biggest city in the Chapari region, which is where Evo Morales is from, who ended up. Later becoming president of Bolivia and a bunch of indigenous folks in the Chapari protested against the privatization of this of the water. There were violent clashes. It was a it was a it was a real kind of focal point of the anti globalization movement for a while. So he wrote a book on this. He's a professor in Ohio. And here's his here's his Twitter. He has a hundred. Yesterday I became a 74th follower. He now has one hundred ninety four followers. But look at early guys. But look at his chart. Like, I mean, look at the chart that's that makes up his Twitter bio. It's, you know, a chart showing wealth flowing to the top one percent and the way that it's coming at the expense of the bottom half. And so and so this guy went in and flipped this radically gerrymandered seed that is pieces of Columbus and then a whole bunch of kind of rural Ohio. So it's just I had no idea that he was even running. Is he think he's more of a blue sky threads type of character or is he just not online? Oh, yeah. We got to find his blue sky. Yeah. So like, you know, this is he's not a blue dog. I think we can we can say that with with some clarity. One one last interesting person I wanted to share the incoming speaker of the Wisconsin. House is going to be is Greta Neubauer, who is a climate activist who was involved with the group that kind of helped found the Sunrise movement. Like Wisconsin going from this like basically right wing Republican can entirely controlled state to now having basically a sunrise person as their speaker who's named Greta. You just kind of can't make. Can't make this stuff up. Truly. I mean, every time I look at my Twitter feed, there's some new astonishing like they elected a trans woman in Alabama. They elected someone in Iowa who had literally dropped out of the race. They elected, you know, this person who raised zero dollars. They I mean, it just is like across the board. And it was. And the thing is, too, like some states have where you can vote straight ticket where you just like click one button. Or circle in one circle and you voted straight ticket Democrat. Virginia doesn't have that. Many states don't have that. Texas doesn't have that is my understanding. And so people were literally going in and whether it was for railroad commissioner or Senate, they were just Democrat, Democrat, Democrat, Democrat. And so the amount of damage to state houses for Republicans is astronomical. I don't know if we have. I think. Oh, yeah. Can you pull that up, Griffin? The state legislature. Legislators, legislatures element that we have here, because these are the things the fallout of this will be generation. I mean, this will last for a long time because now you're talking about, OK, redistricting. You're talking about attorneys general and the way that they're going to enforce or not enforce different laws that were put on the books by Republicans. You know, in Texas, the attorney general, incoming attorney general is already like, I know I'm not going to prosecute women who get abortion medication from out of state. I'm not doing that. In Texas also, totally. They have a new statewide school commission. And Texas has always been very important because the textbook industry, for whatever reason, the educational standards in Texas have these national implications. That's all changed. So here's the state government running tally from State Navigate. Six new Democratic trifectas. That means House, Senate, and Governor. Democrats gain 258 seats. Republicans lose 268. 11 state legislative chambers flip from R to D. Five Republican trifectas broken. Six Democratic supermajorities created. Ten Republican supermajorities broken. Five governorships flip from R to D. Three and four Americans will have a Democratic governor, and a majority of Americans will have a Democrat representing them in state legislation. I have an update on Representative Elect Don Leonard, who wrote The Water Is Life book. Local News says, he says he wants Democratic leadership to commit to major policy changes, including his priorities on economic issues and U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza. Quote, if Akeem Jeffries is willing to get on board with that agenda, then I'd be very open to it. If not, I'll be shopping for a new leader, Leonard said. And this is what, a Trump plus 10 roughly district? Yeah, Trump plus 10. Yeah. Yep. It's so incredible. I mean, it's just, it's just things are happening in our politics that nobody thought was possible. So many things are happening that if we mentioned every candidate, this show would be six hours long. So we're going to move on to Chuck Schumer with our. Friend, David Sirota. Why don't we let him in right now? It makes your day. Sometimes even your week. No data. No AI. It's just that simple. Wasabi created hot cloud storage and is redefining cloud storage for the AI era, delivering simple, predictable cloud storage for AI, analytics, media, and more. Your data is free to move, fast to access, and ready when your AI needs it, giving your business a competitive advantage. When your data moves freely, innovation moves faster, giving you the freedom to build, train, and do more with your data. Hidden fees add up fast as. AI workloads grow. With global scale, enterprise performance, and predictable pricing, Wasabi helps organizations focus on innovation instead of cloud bills. Companies that are paying more in fees than in actual storage costs can fall behind. Don't let it happen. 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And by the way, we need to sever our relationship with Israel. Give us some context for how different the candidates in this wave are versus the 2006 wave in particular. Yeah, because this does feel like a 2006 moment in a lot of ways. You know, it's a second term, a second term of a Republican president or an unpopular Republican president. Typically in second terms, in those situations, the president's party doesn't do that well in midterm elections. But obviously, this was a huge wave. And the wave, the last time this happened, Rahm Emanuel was running the DCCC, right? Rahm Emanuel, the quintessential corporate Democrat, was running the Democrats recruitment operation and recruited a lot of economically conservative Democratic candidates to run in the so-called red district. And there you go. Exactly. Right. The perfect man. Exactly. Rahm got a lot of juice off of recruiting these kind of conservative, economically conservative Democrats who did ride that wave to a win. And then, of course, very soon after, four years after, by 2010, a lot of them had been voted out in Barack Obama's midterm election. What's different, I think, now is that if we're in the same similar or similar situation, is that a lot of the red to blue Democrats who won in a much bigger wave, at least some of them, if not a lot of them, are economically populist Democrats who won. I mean, I think of like Richard Ojeda in North Carolina, a good example, right, who won this, what is it, plus 15, plus 16 Donald Trump district. He wins. And I think so. So here's where I think it now makes a difference. Whereas before in 2006 and in 2010, there was a lot of red and blue Democrats who won in a much bigger wave. And in 2008, you have a Democratic caucus that is somewhat ideologically on economics split between deep blue district members and these red to blue district or purple district members who Rahm Emanuel recruited. And that split creates a kind of economic policy incoherence or incrementalism in 2006 after the election in 2008. Now you have the potential where a lot of the red to blue district members in the Republican caucus are going to win. And that's a lot of the red to blue district members in those plus 10 plus 12 Donald Trump districts are saying, at least rhetorically, much of the same thing that deep blue district and blue state Democrats are saying, right? Like when I say that, you know, when I see people say, oh, you know, James Tallarico won Texas. And, you know, I saw Matt Iglesias say, you know, a moderate victory, James Tallarico wins Texas. I'm like, hey, listen, if you're calling James Tallarico's crusade against Elon Musk, crusade against Trump, you're not going to win Texas. You're going to win Texas. You're going to win big tech crusade against money and billionaires crusade against billionaires, anti-oligarch politics. If you're saying that James Tallarico effectively on a lot of economic issues, campaigning with the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders is now moderate centrism. Like that is a, I mean, one that that's a victory for Bernie Sanders movement that you're essentially admitting that Bernie Sanders movement is, is what it is moderate centrist politics. But I think it also spotlights the idea that it should be. I think it should be a moderate mainstream, not asking a lot of members in red states and purple districts to be roughly in the same place on a core set of economic issues as the so-called progressives are. I mean, I say so-called and putting these labels in quotes because these labels, I think, don't mean much of anything anymore, right? Like when I see this sort of political discourse, you know, did moderates win or did progressives win or did centrists win? And the thing that's kind of blowing up everybody's brains in the DC, New York political class, the media political class is the idea that I think we have been saying for a very long time. It's that, it's that anti-oligarch politics and populism is moderate and centrist politics. At least that's how it's perceived by the average rank and file voter. And that the terms like moderate and centrist have been appropriated for decades to describe a kind of politics that have been wildly out of touch with where the, where the actual voter is. Those terms have been used to describe corporate politics, incrementalist politics, pro-oligarch politics that aren't anywhere near the mainstream center of where the public actually is. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of discussions now about what to do with all of this newfound power and who to vote for. And I think that's a really good point. I think it's a really good point. And I think it's a really good point. Who should lead that? And there have been some battles that we would like you to react to, David, particularly with around Chuck Schumer as Senate majority leader. I've got two clips I want to share. First, Cory Booker was asked the question on if he still supports Schumer. Let's take a listen to that. Do you think Chuck Schumer should remain the leader of the Democrats in the Senate? We have seen the most extraordinary victory. Chuck Schumer was our leader that's delivering one of the most historic suites. We're going to have a vote. We're going to have a family discussion. But I think America should give tonight, today, should give Chuck Schumer his due for what we were able to achieve. He was part of it. He was part of candidate selection, raising the resources against the flood of the Elon Musk money and the like. We won races because of quality candidates, because of extraordinary people that chose them. But also, Chuck was an important coach on the field. So should he remain as the leader? We're going to have a family conversation. I'm a big believer in what we just accomplished and what his leadership has helped deliver. So we're going to have a family conversation, David. We're going to gather around the Thanksgiving table. I mean, listen, you've got to give Chuck Schumer his due. I mean, the Democratic majority is because of Senator Janet Mills, Senator Alexander Vindman, Senator Taylor Stevens. Senator Angie Craig. Senator Angie Craig. Right. I mean, these are the people who Chuck Schumer helped, made sure, delivered the Democratic majority. Of course, I'm joking for those who don't get the joke. Those are all the candidates that Chuck Schumer recruited and lost in the primary. The idea that Chuck Schumer engineered this victory is so absurd that I am actually shocked that Cory Booker could deliver that line with a straight face. I mean, like, literally, how can you deliver that line without cracking up? Like, how can you say that without laughing? Right. It's unbelievable. And yet, I think the real life tension here is you've had a massive change election. Massive. I mean, literally, the biggest change election in our lifetime. Truly. Right. And you're going to say the first thing we're going to do is reelect the same guy, the same leaders, both Schumer and Jeffries. Like, that's the first way we're going to channel the mandate. I mean, it's truly incredible. Now, I will add one thing. I've talked to a lot of lawmakers who've made the point. Look, it, they argue it would matter less who the actual leader is than what, actual commitments they're making. And I do think there is like there is some grain of truth there, like who actually really cares in some ways on policy, who the actual leaders are like. I kind of get that. Like, I do think the optics are bad, but I do kind of get like it's what the commitments are. But I think then it becomes a question of can you really trust anything that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer actually commit to doing? Like, I don't think so. Well, and the other part is that we're going to have a Democratic nominee for president for a while. So they will be the de facto face of the party for the next couple of years. And not exactly the most inspiring way to go. But also, I mean, it does matter because Democrats are giving being given this opportunity. And the first message they need to send is we hear you. We hear that way. Like we get we're still unpopular. We get that we have to prove the doubters wrong and we have to actually deliver for people. And we have to recognize that this is not a, you know, affirmative vote in favor of the legacy Democratic Party. This is a fuck you to Trump. But first and foremost, and a wish that maybe with this kind of a mandate, you people can do something a little bit different. David, my sense is that Schumer could be in more danger than Jeffries simply because I mean, for one thing, the the margin in the House is so large that he now, you know, it's going to be like 260 Democratic seats that he has a lot of wiggle room. He can lose a good number and still be able to get a majority in the House. But with Schumer, as far as I can tell, there's already at least six Democrats who have said, I don't think so. I'm not voting for this guy. I know Troy Jackson has said that. I know Peggy Flanagan has said that. I know Abdul said he's looking at I think he said, didn't he say this to you? He's looking at Chris Van Hollen. I think Alyssa Slotkin. Didn't Alyssa Slotkin say something? She did. Yeah, we just played Cory Booker. That's one that I never would have thought. Of course, Bernie Sanders would be on board with going in a different direction. So it seems and, you know, he has to get a majority. Obviously, the Republicans are not going to vote for him. So if you're losing some even small block of the Democratic Party, you're on thin ice. You know, how are you doing that math? And how are you thinking about how realistic the possibility is of getting someone different? Well, and David, let me add a add a question to that, too. The speaker is a constitutional position, whereas majority leader is kind of made up by the parties. And so as a result, technically, Schumer, as long as he gets 51 percent of the Democrats can then go in and, you know, all you need to do is kind of form a majority and then he becomes the majority leader. Right. So his opponents would have to, like, block the Democrats from forming a majority, which is a tall order. Do you have any sense of how they're navigating those politics? Because, like, in the House, if you block the speaker, the speaker is blocked. It's done. But yeah, but that's not. But that but it's different than in the Senate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I mean, there's a bunch of thoughts here. I mean, first of all, I do think. Look, I would I think it's a somewhat safe bet, somewhat not perfect, but but a safer bet that Hakeem Jeffries ends up being the speaker, except for one thing that I keep coming back to. The margin is so big that that there's a. I guess the conventional wisdom is that means that Hakeem Jeffries has it because, like, two or three or 10 members can't sway the actual official vote, as you allude to, Ryan, in the House over who the speaker is. But there's there's the flip side of this, where the the freshman class itself is so big. I think somebody said there's going to be 75 or 80 new House Democrats, like new, like literally new people. Right. And my point in bringing that up is that's 75 or 80 new House Democrats. 70 or 80 new votes who haven't been hanging around with Hakeem Jeffries for the last two, four or six years. I mean, Jeffries has probably through the DCCC has helped some of them, but certainly not all of them. And the point is, is that those relationships at best are new. And so you can't imagine a world where all those new members say, hey, listen, we want something new here and we don't feel. We don't feel necessarily as tied to the to the House Democratic leadership as as sort of old time incumbents who've been waiting for the seniority system, et cetera, et cetera. Like you can imagine a dynamic like that. I don't think we've seen that yet. And so and so over in the Senate, you are seeing that right. You're seeing all these new members, members who explicitly campaign that way. And and I just think what ends up happening here is is whether you get to a critical mass of enough Democrats saying I'm open to voting for someone else. I think that's why you see Cory Booker, to my mind, that like the interpretation of what he's doing is he's waiting to see who the winner is probably going to be. And he's trying because he doesn't want to be on the wrong side of the eventual winner. And to me, that is a big signal of how fluid this is. Right. Cory Booker is a weathervane. I mean, he is a professional weathervane. That is like literally his job in the Senate Democratic caucus, right, to be a political weathervane. And so if the weathervane is sort of flapping around saying, hey, I don't want to tell you which way the wind is blowing exactly. I'm trying to be on all sides like that tells you that, yes, this is a really fluid situation. Yeah. David, isn't there also a great point? Isn't there also like a twenty twenty eight consideration around Hakeem Jeffries, where some senior Democrats who are thinking about running in twenty twenty eight don't want to go after the. The first black speaker of the House. And so it seems like in some ways Hakeem might be safer than Chuck in that twenty twenty eight narrative. I think so, except for the idea. And it hasn't happened yet. But if you had a another member of Congress who could better unite all of the different factions, I think that I mean, I had. Well, David, you're from. Colorado is right. Joe. Joe Neguse is very well liked among his colleagues, kind of a progressive Democrat from Colorado. Has anybody been. I mean, I've heard a lot of people say a lot of good things about him and kind of hoping that he would kind of throw his hat in the ring. Have you heard anything? Well, so first of all, I'm I'm a big fan of Joe Neguse. I mean, Joe Neguse is a is a really, really excellent politician. He is a I mean, I just he just just like I've been I'm not a guy who. Like likes a lot of politicians. I really like Joe Neguse. I think he's a really talented politician. And I think that that's the kind of lawmaker. And I'm not saying him specifically, but that's the kind of lawmaker you could imagine being an alternate candidate. And I had somebody put it to me this way and using Medicare for all as an example. They basically said, listen, there really isn't precedent. There is not precedent in either party for there to be. There is not precedent in either party for there to be a party leader in the House who is at odds with the majority of his own his or her own party on mate like a giant set of issues using Medicare for all as an example that that that when you've seen Republican leaders, you know, Kevin McCarthy at times be at odds with the majority of their caucus on a huge issue. They don't last very long. care for all and that he wouldn't commit to allowing a vote on it. That is, I think, I mean, I haven't done the math with the new Congress yet, but that is that's pretty at odds with at least a very substantial number of Democrats on a very, very top tier issue. And you have to wonder how long can a leader survive being at odds with his own party on such a major issue? That to me is the fissure. That's the question of is there a candidate in the House, whether this time or next time, who better represents and reflects that party on all of those major issues? And I would add to that Wall Street, AI, and APAC, the super obvious one, but Wall Street, AI, APAC and Medicare for all. It's like, hold on a second. Like, what's the agenda beyond that? Like abolish. Which he's not for. I don't know if that's a majority position in the caucus. Maybe he's median immigration policy. But other than say that, he's like far to the right on basically everything. And can I can I add something that I think is important for this discussion? I think the other dynamic that is different. I just I just talked to on our live on our live channel with Abdul El-Sayed and I was talking to him about independent media and not to like toot all of our own horns here. But what Abdul El-Sayed. Said and I'm paraphrasing here was essentially independent media is now much more robust and able to to focus attention on the gaps between elected officials, party leaders and what the voters voted for and what the what the rank and file elected officials promised. So my point here is, is that as one example, like the lever recently reported that that. Hakeem Jeffries had essentially stacked the Democratic, the House Democrats, AI policy, policy steering committee with legislators who are very close and get money from the AI industry. 10, 15, 20 years ago, you didn't have that kind of reporting to point out how Jeffries is effectively operationalizing the gap between where he is and where his caucus is. In other words, making clear the. Actual real world policy ramifications of how Hakeem Jeffries and his machine is at odds with where the average rank and file a Democratic elected official is and certainly where the the average rank and file Democratic voter is. So now you go down that list on a number of issues where you where Hakeem Jeffries is walking. If he's if he is the speaker where all of those gaps don't get to operate in the background, how he's stacking the Foreign Affairs Committee with APAC Democrats. How he's stacking different committees with and prior and promoting and give and giving chairmanships to the Democrats, the the minority faction of Democrats, the the the not the majority of Democrats, how he's he's empowering the faction that isn't representative of the voters that will all be reported on day to day, week to week by whether it's breaking points, the lever. The. Much more robust independent media ecosystem. That is where I think it has actually and it will actually change the dynamic. Yeah. And you're right to point out, I mean, as much as there's there will be a distance, especially with these new freshman members between Jeffries and your rank and file Democratic member. The distance between Jeffries and the Democratic base is going to be even greater because the reason why the freshman class is going to be so distant from him on those issues. Is because they come straight out of the Democratic base and in the Democratic base, abolish ISIS, not a fringe position, separate from Israel and absolutely no APAC money. That is not a fringe position that is that they're committing genocide, not a fringe position. Medicare for all. These things are overwhelmingly popular. You were reading one of these new candidates coming in is like, yeah, I'm a moderate. That means I'm from Medicare for all. Like, that's the way that's the whole thing. That's actually true, because if you pull the country, that is the moderate position. Yes. So so he is he's going to have a problem, no doubt, between where he wants to be ideologically. And he is an ideologue like he is a committed ideologue and where his entire party has ultimately gone. David, I also want to talk to you about the accountability part of the agenda here, which I think also is a mandate from voters who are disgusted with elites acting with impunity. They're disgusted with the crimes of the billionaire class. They're disgusted with the crimes of the Trump regime. You have Robert Garcia coming in, you know, as likely chair of the Oversight Committee saying, hey, time to lawyer up. That got a lot of attention. What do you think are should be some of the priorities here? And how do you think about this? Because I already see the media framing of like, oh, well, you don't want to just go for retribution. Right. How should Democrats coming into Congress be thinking about this? That's part of the mandate and the work to do. So I think right after the election, I think it was on Morning Joe, you saw speaking of Hakeem Jeffries, he said something to the effect of we have to focus on affordability, not focus on getting even. And that term getting even, to me, it raised a red flag because what it's doing is it's designed, I think, to depict holding accountable and looking back. And and using subpoena power to unpack what has happened. It casts that very important work as revenge, as inappropriate revenge. And I think that was deliberate. It's a new version of the old idea from when Barack Obama was elected president, where he insisted we shouldn't look backwards. We should look forward. This idea that holding accountable and evaluating what what happened, looking. Looking in the past is somehow bad. I would argue, and I think most Americans probably agree that one of the problems creating all of the other problems in the here and now and moving forward is the creation of an accountability free society that let's not look backwards. Let's look forwards has been used to bury things like the Epstein files has been used to to essentially give a get out. Of jail free card to all of the law breaking that's happened now. It removes a deterrent to bad behavior today. If you're constantly saying all of the bad lawless behavior you did in the past will never be looked at. No one will ever be held accountable. And so I think that's what Hakeem Jeffries is trying to do. And I think it's obviously the wrong path. And there's also this sort of sub debate. Inside of this, which which we at The Lever have reported on where you've got the tech industry through one of its powerful trade lobbying groups trying to argue, hey, Democrats, if you do use investigatory power, subpoena power, only focus it on Trump and Trump's self enrichment. Do not focus it on the tech industry, the tech oligarchs or corporate America. Right. Like this idea that the problem is like it goes back to the idea that the problem is only Trump, that not that Trump is a symptom. Of a larger systemic system of of corruption. Now, I was I think I was encouraged to see Garcia's press conference. I saw some clips where he was talking about looking at corporate power. You saw the Groundwork Collaborative put out its its its its proposal for all the different ways to hold corporate America accountable. By the way, not just in how it has bent the knee to Donald Trump, but in how it has used its power to screw over. Americans through things like surveillance pricing, that's all a long way of saying the Democrats, first and foremost, have a have the power and the responsibility to use that investigatory power to hold accountable those who have been breaking the law. If they don't do that, I would expect there to be a backlash. And if they don't have a broad aperture to look at how corporate America, its predatory practices. And its corruption, both with the Trump administration and outside of it, if they have to use that power to put all of that in on the investigatory table or or or again, we'll be here in two or four years with the public saying you didn't do that. And now we're voting you out of office. And just to draw the link between the Jeffries conversation and and this to underline your point about the way that he stacked this committee of AI people. One of them was, as you guys reported, was Valerie, Valerie Foucher. So Valerie Foucher had won with millions of dollars of APAC support two cycles ago against or maybe three cycles ago against Nita Alam. And she knew or she suspected that Nita may be challenging her again. But she also understood that APAC was becoming extremely toxic in her district. So she publicly said, I'm not taking any more APAC money, but that creates a problem. If you don't have grassroots support. You need big money. So Jeffries puts her on this. ai panel that's right and all of this ai super PAC money floods in so congratulations good she's not taking a PAC money but she's you know money's money and she ends up winning by like 150 votes or that you know very like she's she survived but if those are the folks that you're putting up in in the top positions of power and then the ai companies come in and say well why don't you look at trump rather than us and that's who is in that position i'm like okay yeah that's a good idea why you know you you were pretty friendly to me last time around a couple million dollars literally saved my election like without that she's not in congress at all and jeffries in order to pull off a calculated move like that has to understand that that's the result of it i mean i mean i i would argue maybe that's the deliberate result of it that's actually that's actually what he wants the whole point yeah right yeah like that is yeah i mean it it takes the idea of the i mean the very i it's been around forever the idea of the you know the banking committee chairperson or subcommittee chair all the money raises lots of money from the banks right i mean it's sort of it's sort of the the the fundraising system and how it captures the the people who are supposed to be regulating but it works at another at a secondary level oh i i i'm the leader of the of the democratic party i'm going to put particularly transactional politicians in particular places and that those transactional politicians who were rescued by money wherever the money came from doesn't it almost doesn't matter now i'm doing a favor to the industry that has funded them by putting them in the position it's the host shaping itself to the paris yes exactly and i think i mean look that is the next level of this and i think again i go back to the to the idea not to toot all of our own horns but i actually think it's a real a real thing whereas you can imagine back in you know 10 years ago nancy pelosi's political machine or you know 30 40 50 years ago tip o'neill's political machine doing this kind of thing and expecting nobody to ever really hear about it like maybe you know congressional quarterly or you know in you know in the trade publications in dc yeah but there's no the actual general public never hears about it now there there's a real information system and a real information conduit to make everyone aware in real time of the dirty deals that are happening and i think the interesting question is does somebody like hakeem jeffries actually appreciate what he potentially cannot get away with right and same thing with chuck schumer like like the old ways of getting away with things hey i'm gonna stack this subcommittee over here or this steering committee over there and no one's really gonna notice like there is now a noticing machine right like there's a lot of right like there is now a conduit to be like hey today this morning that bullshit is happening and people will find out about it so it's interesting to to to to to sort of wonder whether these leaders from a sort of kind of an an ancient outdated era of politics even fully appreciate that yeah that's such a great point i wanted to put up this um a piece from this twitter post from lena khan about the importance of investigations and how you know i think there's two components i think there's the investigations into the corrupt practices the criminality like any sort of abuses of trump the trump family elon like any you know the ice um murderers like all of that sort of stuff and then she's also pointing to how it can go hand in glove with an affordability agenda and i thought this was um really important context and also history so she says here or why should congressional democrats investigate corporate america if their mandate is to deliver real economic change because investigations are a key catalyst for securing reform and legislation for much of the last century congress used to be the main institutional player working to secure an economy that serves working people a key tool was oversight lawmakers routinely investigated complex markets and major corporations identifying problems and exposing wrongdoing a major goal of these investigations was to learn what was driving certain people's lives and what was driving certain problems and figure out how to fix them she talks about the work that was done um in 2019 on amazon apple facebook google she also points out you know some uh some lessons and some things to work towards including beefing up the uh budget that goes towards this investigatory capability but she points out even a relatively small number of dogged talented lawyers ready to dive and can make an impact in the 30s a single congressional lawyer ferdinand pecora helped reshape our entire banking system by subpoenaing records and interrogating top financiers including jp morgan the investigation exposed self-dealing market manipulation tax avoidance and laid the groundwork for foundational new deal legislation including the glastiegel act and the securities exchange act and she goes on from there but i thought that was a really important point in context to david that it's not just about i agree with you about the elite impunity and about the accountability but it also can be a tool for delivering for working people well i mean look let's let's do you know i mean sort of i want to play the song how a bill becomes a law you know like like like i think we've all the country has kind of forgotten because it's so long ago how how a bill is supposed to become a law what's not in that song in that you know famous school of rock song sing a little bit of it for us i'm just a bill i like right uh what what's forgotten about that is how how are bills supposed to ever be proposed part of it is like yeah like the the constituent comes and says i have a problem and then the lawmaker kind of writes a bill to deal with the problem but in the interim what is supposed to happen is congress is supposed to use its subpoena power to investigate the matter right the lawmakers first do a real thorough investigation what is the problem what is one side what does this side say what does that side say what's going on here we got a subpoena these records okay now we fully understand that the bill is supposed to be a bill that's supposed to be the problem now we're going to write a piece of legislation based on what we've learned to actually deal with the problem the reason we that we haven't had that machinery uh nearly as robust that of that machinery in many decades is because lobbyists basically took that over right that job then became the corporate lobby's job or put it another way congress basically outsourced that job to its donors and to lobbyists who just handed it over to the lobbyists to hand them uh pre-written bills rather than than doing the investigation and the fact finding on their own obviously that is a deeply corrosive and corrupting system when the lobbies that are being regulated are handing the effectively the congressional regulators or overseers the laws that they want right that is a that is a form of deep corruption um that is operating almost imperceptibly in the background that is a form of deep corruption um that is operating the the outcomes are essentially pre-rigged when congress isn't doing its own investigation to figure out what to do because they're just relying on essentially the donor class so so so that's a that's a rationale and a a reason why using investigatory power yes it bring it raises public awareness of what of all the horrible things that have happened yes it holds accountable people who broke the law but also it actually does find facts to inform legislation so that legislation isn't just uh handwritten by corporate lobbies great points uh well david it's nice to see you in such high spirits i read an analysis of yours in the lever uh right after the election saying this is the moment i built the lever for uh what tell us you know on your way out here what the levers plans are to lead this new democratic moment and guide people well well thanks first of all thanks so much for having me secondly um i did say before the election actually uh that i that i was feeling optimistic and it was really funny hassan piker i was talking to him about it uh when and he started almost laughing because he hadn't ever heard me be optimistic you're not known for that i'm not known i'm not known for but i mean to be in this work i think you actually have to like weirdly even if you're pessimistic like to do the work you kind of have to have a deep optimism that it matters and i think the that it matters and not just our work but your work and the work of independent media and and obviously um people like bernie sanders i mean i'm just thinking about i worked for bernie sanders in the house in the late 1990s and and just to to think about that's been on my mind these last few like to think about the journey and i remember being a sort of wide-eyed essentially kid in that office thinking how are his politics not why are they considered so fringe i don't understand it and it took almost 30 years for for this moment to be like it took 30 years for people to realize that that these are mainstream moderate centrist pragmatic politics and it's just it's kind of mind-blowing so all that's a long way of saying uh our i that's exactly why i created the lever from scratch uh right after the 2020 election it's to take moments like this and make sure that what has been promised to the american people is what is done delivered to the american people uh especially of course by you know by the democrats uh in the sense of they have made populist economic promises. They have made anti-war promises. They have made anti-genocide promises when it comes to Israel and Gaza and the like. And those promises now need to be delivered on. The point is, is that there has been a culture in the Democratic Party of, OK, the election happened. Now let's just go back to brunch. And that attitude and culture has to end. It is what I would argue created the Trump era. When a lot of people, liberals, went back to brunch after the 2008 election, hope and change became more of the same, which ultimately delivered the conditions for Donald Trump. If we repeat that cycle again, it's going to be a Donald Trump, but worse. And the lever exists to make sure that that doesn't happen. Breaking points exist to make sure that doesn't happen. The independent media ecosystem exists for that. And I think the challenge is, is to every single day be making clear to our readers of the larger audience and the public that the gap between what is promised and what is delivered is the thing that requires a permanent campaign. The election cannot be looked at as an end. The election is the end of the beginning. Wow. Incredible. Well, everybody, please check out the lever news. It'll be in the description. I know after the election, I blasted the David, David's sort of rap song. You know, are you are you aware of that one? I had to talk in the car. I hadn't heard it until Hassan played it. I'm in the Lotus and I'm feeling like David Sirota and it feels excellent. Is the lyrics. I should tell you, I don't have a Lotus, but I feel like I'm figuratively in a Lotus right now. I do feel like David Sirota. There it is. I will say I don't usually feel excellent. I usually feel angsty. And but but I do feel excellent right now. And and I think, you know, but I'm not I'm realistic about it. This is a big challenge. We're all in the Lotus today. All right. Love you guys. Thanks so much. Talk to you soon. Progressive's accident response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident because the only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's accident response. Learn more at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions. No data, no AI. Don't let it happen. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Why not you? That's odoo.com. Ryan, Sirota was just talking about, you know, working for Bernie back in the 90s. And a lot of people have been making this comparison, like maybe Bernie Sanders is sort of like our Barry Goldwater, who didn't win, but really set the bar. What do you make of the agenda for the Republican Party going forward? What do you make of that comparison? I think it's strong. To be pedantic, Goldwater did win the nomination in 64 and then, you know, got absolutely rinsed by LBJ. Whereas if Bernie had won the nomination, Bernie would have won. Yeah. And then, and then what? You know, one-term president impeached, like, you know, might have been, might have been a catastrophe. Or it might have set off the political revolution. You know, Jesse Jackson, you know, is some, you know, his presidential campaigns of the 80s helped to create Bernie too. So, you know, this goes back, but so many people that came into politics are now, whether it's, you know, Mamdani, Abdul, AOC, like, it's unquestionable that, like, he was the entry point for a lot of these people. And also gave them a frame because AOC, for instance, as she's talked about this, very excited by Obama 2008. Abdul, you know, there was Bill Clinton, you know, at his commencement. You can imagine, you know, different directions that they take as politicians, but Bernie Sanders really gave them the frame for, no, like, another world is possible here. Like, it's the millionaires and the billionaires. We're going to take them on. And that's how we're going to deliver. And setting that frame, you know, created this opportunity for people now to fully answer the Barry Goldwater question, like, is there going to be a Reagan? And we're not there yet. We're, we're wondering what's going to happen in 2028 and 2032. So it hasn't been, it hasn't been written yet. It has not been written yet. Yeah, I actually really liked AOC's post about, you know, about Obama and how she was saying to all of you younger people trying to understand millennials. There's this massive wave across the country, you know, people winning in places and you're sweeping out the Bush era war criminals and it all feels so possible. And that's your first vote. And also, I was talking to Kyle about this yesterday. We still at least I did. Ryan, you've always been wiser than me and ahead of the curve. But I still had this like the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. So we're just getting started. Like things are only going to get better from here. Like, this is the beginning, but where do we go next? That was the vibe. And my daughter is 18. She voted. This was her first election. Her politics, you won't be surprised to learn, fairly similar to mine. She's so hyped up. The number of TikTok, like, blue wave hype reels that she sent me are astronomical. And so she's kind of having that experience now of what it was in 2008 of like, oh, my God, this is on the table. Like we just went to the polls and voted. Now there's all this possibility. So it does remind me of that moment and how extraordinary it felt, how open it felt, how inevitable everything felt. And of course, your point, nothing is inevitable. The the arc of the universe does not always bend towards justice. It's something you have to fight for and scrap for. And you can easily regress and you can easily go backwards. But but I thought that was I did like the way that she put that and connected this moment to that moment, the way that many of us felt at the time. Yeah. And my book tells the story, too, that like in 2008, she was in college. She phone banked like she was like excited for Obama. But New York is such a catastrophic voting system. She never got her absentee ballot. So she took a bus from Boston down to New York like overnight to make sure she could vote in person, but then becomes, you know, like everybody else, you know, pretty disappointed with how he governs. And then Occupy comes around and then Occupy flows into the Bernie Sanders campaign. And that's what really gave people like AOC this like idea that like, oh, there's there's another approach to politics. Yes. That still recognizes the kind of hope and change and optimism embedded in Obama in that that feeling that they had in 08. But it actually has needs to take on the oligarchs to deliver. And I think that's part of what's helpful about this moment. I mean, first of all, you are seeing a genuine like generational change. It really, you know, Abdul and James Tallarico and Andy Andrews. I mean, a lot of these candidates are young. A lot of them are millennials. And this is kind of the politics that millennials have always had. It was always been the most progressive generation. And so and, you know, really fomented by the formed and shaped by the lessons of the Iraq war and the financial crash. And so it is a moment of millennial politicians and millennial voters kind of coming into their own and taking control. So I think that's a really important aspect of it. But the other piece that makes me hopeful is that Obama was able to just run on a lot of vibes, but there wasn't as much of a sort of like ideological backing to it. And ultimately, and there wasn't as much there wasn't the independent media. I mean, that's the part that Sirota's talking about, how different that is, that you couldn't get away with the same, like, I'm just going to pull over all the old Clinton staffers and like a bunch of bankers and put them in the administration, call that hope and change. You couldn't get away with what's, yeah, exactly. You couldn't get away with that in the same way today. So it does feel like there's more, I guess, content to the nature of the political movement on the left at this point. And that certainly, a large part of that has to do with Bernie and the political education that people received, you know, watching his runs and also the way that ultimately people who, you know, like Jennifer Welsh, I mentioned her earlier, who previously was adversarial towards Bernie, Joy Reid, same thing, have come around and been like, you know what? He was right. He was right. What he was saying about oligarchs, he was right. And that's where the whole democratic base is. And now the fight is to make the politicians in Washington govern the way that the moderate view of the country is. The actual views of the country reflect on economic issues. And that's why me and Ryan are pushing to nominate Bernie Sanders for 2028 run and do this one last time. Right, Ryan? I mean, he should run and then have a running mate and say, look, I'm going to, I will do two years. I'm going to pass Medicare for all. And I'm going to retire two years in. And then whoever the vice president is comes in. I don't think I'm with you. I don't think I'm with you on this one, Ryan. Why not? He's got, he can do two years. Come on. He does still seem exactly the same. Like I see no signs of decline with that man. He is as sharp as ever. He's just one of those people who is completely genetically gifted and is fully as with it as he has always been. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're convinced, Crystal. Well, you're talking a lot about the future. So why don't we get to a little bit of future of AI? The Blue Tsunami Sweep has the AI industry scrambling. They are trying to figure out exactly how they can be considered liberal and cringe again. The AI industry here is scrambling to repackage a $10 trillion infrastructure build out to appease a hostile electorate. Some of their ideas include no more non-disclosure agreements, money for schools and cities, environmental concessions, labor protections, codified obligations over voluntary frameworks, and job training programs. This comes as the Nasdaq and tech AI stocks are taking major hits, mainly in the chip sector is where the bleed is happening the hardest. But DropSight breaks down some of the numbers here. The tech heavy Nasdaq was down about 4.8%, S&P 500 about 3.3%. Bitcoin fell over 5%. But chip and AI data center stocks are leading the route as investors fear a Democratic Congress and a wave of local opposition will slow the AI building boom. And I just wanted to finish it off with AI pumper, all-in podcast host, Jason Kalkanis, who has a great idea to turn this whole thing around. He says, power move for the Democrats. Let Americans know they support the AI industry and the thoughtful build out of data centers in communities that want them, and that they will collect massive taxes from them and pay for universal healthcare. This is how you get Medicare for all. Your guys' reactions. Well, tell me, where are those communities that want them? Because my understanding is out of, what was it, like 43 ballot initiatives, one of them passed everywhere else in red states and blue states and new blue states and old red states and whatever. I have voters everywhere. We're like, absolutely not. We're not doing this. And furthermore, you know, the broader question about AI, which I think the data center rebellion has been at the bleeding edge of the conversation of AI, because it was the first real physical, obvious manifestation of this whole project making people's lives worse. But in the exit polls, majority of people said that AI regulation was important to them and that it was, in fact, a crucial or major factor in their vote. So, you know, now the markets apparently are, they're trying to recover today. Things are going back up. But the state level races is actually where a lot of the action is. I mean, Virginia already have Abigail Spanberger and you have a legislative backlash here in Virginia, which has been a center of the data center build out. Texas, obviously, with Elon Musk, has been at the center of the data center build out. Gina Hinojosa ran explicitly against the building of these data centers and the oligarchs. Tallarico ran very adversarially towards Elon Musk. I saw Governor-elect Hinojosa coming in and saying, you know, hey, we're going to take a look at the data center build out. I saw Governor-elect Hinojosa coming in and saying, you know, hey, we're going to take a look at, first of all, we're not moving forward with additional data centers. And second of all, we're going in and taking a look at these deals that were being made with Elon Musk to, like, sell off public land. We don't want to continue to move in that direction. So when you look at the totality of the message that was sent and the people that just got elected, Abdul Tu is a pause AI guy, Will Lawrence winning in Michigan. When you look at the totality of this, yeah, they've got a big political issue on their hands. And they threw all the way in with Trump, you know, almost all of them threw all the way in with Trump. They thought that the MAGA regime was going to be here forever. They acted like it was a final political victory and there would never be any say again from the voters. And Elon, of course, first and foremost, among them, the amount of money that he spent and then the taking over Twitter, turning it into this insane right wing Nazi echo chamber, doing doge and taking over part of the federal government. And so, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't And so now they're looking around and going, oh, boy, what did we what did we do? You know, what sort of a bet have we made for ourselves here? Because people are not happy and they are going to have their Democratic say. And for them to be offering universal health care now is kind of delicious. It's like. It is a real indication of how much fear they have at this moment that a week ago, they're not offering universal health care to the public. And obviously, it's not a sincere offer, but. Yeah, it's it's it's incredible. I think also the public is probably I don't know if they would put it this way, but they'd say, look, figure your stuff out first. Before you keep building. Like you have built to the capacity where your bots are rogue and running around the world, hacking everything. Like, how about you get that under control first, like figure that out, and then you build more powerful agents. Yeah. Yeah. The pit the pitch last week before the election was these things are going to take your jobs. They're going to kill you. All art is dead. Art is meaningless now. You will never speak to a friend or family member again because you'll have a robot friend and they're going to steal your crypto and and they're going to also rob you blind and also get water and rice because the grid is going to go down. Now, the pitch is just let us cure cancer. We promise we'll cure cancer like that. Cure it for free. Yeah, I mean, I mean, and it's been not just the guys, but like, I mean, Zuckerberg getting on TRT, the gold chain, like, what is he going to do? What is he going to do now? Is he going to have to go back to Urban Outfitters? I've got, I'll show you, I'll share with you what they're what they're going to do. Have you guys seen this? Before we begin, the indigenous peoples whose ancestral land this data center occupies, your lived experience is our most valuable data. We recognize that good intentions don't erase harm. That looks like to redistribute power. And we want to lead that work together in the form of a sincere anthemic pop song. I took a long hard look sometime after the polls closed. My values never changed. They just updated overnight. We were always blue. Hold my hand. Hold my shed. Look how much you found a case. We were always blue. We were always blue. I believe in second chances. It's all water under the bridge. Trust us, we got this. If we just move left to smidge. Yes, the future's still in sight. If you take us at our word tonight. Whatever we might do. We were always blue. What the hell? Protect yourself. I'm convinced. It worked on me. Jensen looked great. Jensen looks thriving. I mean, so guys, they've seen the light. Things are going to be different. You know, we're going to be different. We're going to be different. You know, give them what they need. The pronouns are back. The land acknowledgements are here. Black Lives Matter. The kente cloth is coming out of the closet. So it's going to be. It reminds me like looking at those guys and those vibes. That was the vibe of like early Silicon Valley tech. It was like optimistic and it was supposed to improve your life. And like, I don't think that these pitches and pivots are going to work. work now because of how grotesque they've acted over the last two years. But also this AI technology doesn't improve your life the way an iPhone improved your life. Like it just doesn't. Like maybe if you're hiring a bunch of coders, you can hire less coders now. But the usage on things like Meta's Muse, like people use it for a day and then they're not turning it back on. People are not using these personal assistants very heavily. Maybe the adoption will be slow, maybe five, 10 years from now. But even if you forgive the leaders for the horrible things they've said, the tech itself doesn't really improve your life, at least in its current state, outside of being a search engine. There's a new report from Meta, the AI safety researcher group. And I haven't fully had a chance to dig into it because I've been a little busy this week with some other things. But on, you know, in sort of AI world, there's a big freak out about the revelations about how fast Anthropic is moving towards recursive self-improvement and how much is already being done by the models. Anthropic, of course, Dario Amadei was one of the leaders coming on saying we should, quote unquote, pace the frontier. We've got to slow down. Well, now we're seeing what they're doing and they're not slowing down. They're speeding up. So a lot of the dire predictions. about where things were going and when we would hit this exponential growth, you know, intelligence growth, that that may be coming even sooner than was thought before. And I mean, like in the coming months level of sooner, which already, you know, we were thinking like, oh, maybe two years, maybe three years. Now it's like 18 months, 12 months, maybe even by the end of the year. Like we're right on the cusp of that is at least what they're saying. So this has, you know, my big, I mean, I've been obviously very focused on this. And with the elections, I think the elections were primarily about cost of living and the Iran war and hating Trump and the ICE criminals and all those sorts of things. But I do think you start to see the way that AI is going to upend our entire politics. It's going to upend how politics is done with AI slot videos and deep fakes. Like the one we just played. Yeah, like the one we just played, for example, and make it very difficult to tell reality from fiction. Olivia Reingold, welcome to the party with your. With your AI deep fakes already. It's going to upend political coalitions. That's why I think that the, you know, the sort of opening up of the map that we experienced in this election where you've got Mississippi voters voting the same way as California voters. I think that may continue a pace as well, because of the direct impact on every American and the way that this is upsetting, whether it's the data centers, whether it's the loss of control. Yeah. Yeah. Whether it's the wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of a few. These are really disastrously unpopular and deeply anti-human direction that these oligarchs are trying to take us in. So, you know, I think this is this is going to be very central moving into 2028. And as candidates begin to position themselves, I just hope we have enough time between now and then. Lena Khan and that thing that I pulled up earlier, you know, one of. She says one of the things we need to look at first is the AI industry. I could not agree more. And I'm really thankful that you're going to have some politicians in there now who agree with the vast majority of the public who are not bought off by the AI or the crypto industry who are deeply concerned about this direction and are, you know, hopefully going to exert some some influence there and be able to to just stop this insanity and reflect the will of the people. That's really my. My hope, because the people are not happy with what is going on here. We were always blue. All right. On that note, let's get to some AMA questions. And it's our favorite time of the week. We do some AMA questions. A little apology. Our Monday morning emails broke because so many people signed up during our live streams. Wait, sorry. Our Thursday emails, I think, broke some some emails broke. This week, we're sorry. I had to do a little cleanup with the IT on the back end. Everyone should be fixed now. We are excited to have all of you. And if you would like to submit questions that could be pulled up on future episodes, the link to submit an AMA question is in every daily show email at the top with the rest of the links. But first, let's get to Nathan Buford, who says Thomas Massey presidential run in twenty twenty eight. He seems to be the only Republican who the party could clearly identify stood up to Trump. Look, guys, the Republican base is still with Trump. OK, there was a small portion, a nine percent that flipped it actually voted Democrat. Some stayed home and are dissatisfied. There is much more dissension in the rake in the ranks than before. However, overwhelmingly, the Republican base is still pro Israel. The Republican base is still pro Trump. And so I think it's going to take a little bit longer before. Someone like a Thomas Massey could come in and overturn the apple cart. You know, I was thinking about this in the context of Trump. Trump was the one who comes in, you know, after Bush and is willing to say, hey, you know, the Iraq war. That was really not the right thing to do. It took, though, that eight year interregnum of Barack Obama before the Republican base was ready to hear the truth about the Bush war criminals and the disastrous nature of the Iraq war. So, yeah, I don't. New media does accelerate things, right, in terms of people's grappling of the issues. So we might that might happen faster this time. What do you think, Brian? The problem that Trump has is that a lot of his base of support has been relying on the cult of Trump, that disagreeing with Trump inside the MAGA movement was not allowed on anything, like not even even the most basic, smallest differences. So you're now starting to see even people on Fox News gently say maybe this maybe could have done this a little bit better. And they're not even saying like that his advisers led him astray on X. Like they're even on Fox. They're criticizing Trump directly, gently, softly. But, you know, in a way that would be would have been unthinkable a week ago. And that can have a cascading effect. That once everybody else is like, oh, you also think this guy's naked? Oh, okay. I thought, yeah, we, I mean, like, so you could see a precipitous departure from the cult. And then who else has credibility? It's a really interesting question. Certainly, Massey is one of them. And he's very talented. Would he have the grassroots money? Maybe. Um, so yeah, that's, it's, that it's an interesting question. He might get a Tucker endorsement. Um, yeah, you could imagine that. Maybe. I mean, certainly only if J.D. doesn't run. Exactly. Tucker is still trying to establish an image of J.D. Vance is on the inside, but he's against the war. And he's like our fighter on the inside. I mean, clearly tries to position him in that way. And they're friends. And he's friends with Don Jr. too. Who's like of that wing of the party. Don Jr.'s out like trashing the Iran war. And so, you know, for people who are close to him, who I talked to, he's always been against it. Like that, like he genuinely has been. And now he's publicly against it. I mean, I think he understands that the war not only ended, um, his dad's presidency and it hit probably his possibility of running and, and now has him in the sights of investigators for the rest of his life for all of his life. For all the whatever, whatever activity he's been up to the last couple of years. Um, so he's like, you know, F it. Yeah. I was against this thing that destroyed my life. Mm hmm. That's fair. That's very fair. Um, all right. This next one comes from Mark Sherman. Please discuss pros and cons of impeachment. Even if repeatedly unsuccessful, aren't you running up stats on who voted against and making Trump, uh, X times impeached president? Um, go ahead, Ryan. You've got thoughts. Yeah. The pro for me would be only, the only pro would be you, you convict. Yeah. Like you build such a strong case. Well, first you try to get Medicare for all. You try to get him to fire Stephen Miller, release all the innocent people from immigrant detention. Like try to try to improve people's lives first, um, while you're investigating all of the different crimes. And then you build a criminal case against him. 11 votes is what it should be your target rather than getting a spectacle of another impeachment and then a trial and an acquittal and you get the news and you get the media coverage like don't like I don't I don't see the point in that I'd say if you come for the king this time like don't miss yeah that's basically my view too I do think there's a possibility that you do have a you know republican fracturing you can already see with Ron DeSantis some people are going to calculate that it is in their best political future uh you know interest to break with Trump and to chart a separate course you are going to have some people who are going to look at these results in particular and be like you know if I represent Utah which Utah had a gigantic shift um just you know wasn't really noticed because there weren't statewide races on the ballot but in any case if you represent Utah and you're looking at this you're like oh this is not feeling safe to me maybe the move is actually to go against Trump the political calculation has changed so I do think there is a possibility I don't think it's likely right now but I do think there's a possibility that you could get the requisite number of republicans to convict if you have something that is devastating that is airtight you know to me the illegality of the war could be a good place a potential um place to look and if you'd catch him actually insider trading on it yeah exactly yes yes something along those lines you know where it's really going to put pressure on them and you you feel like you actually have a shot at convicting because I agree with you I'm not here for another like moral victory or um you know show trial or media frenzy I think we need to we need to make sure we're delivering and that has to be first and foremost and um so yeah that's that's my view and the investigations absolutely and if those investigations turn up something that is devastating enough where you can think you can get that level of support then yes this next one from abjit krishna kumar any plans on collaborations with david sarota in the future no guy's a hack uh let's see john carlo kosoven kosa for people who are only watching this uh sarota was on and i've literally i don't know if i've ever seen him happy in my life and he's happy now it was nice uh one carlo kosa valente says what should angie nixon's next move be you cannot just have her sit on the sidelines what should other dems that came close to flipping seats do with their talents well she's already saying she's gonna run for senna in 2028 because it's only a two-year term that moody is serving out so i think that's awesome i think she should do that apparently moskowitz is also signaling he might jump into that race so that'd be a fun primary fight right there appreciate that one yeah i mean angie is such a talent it really is extraordinary and there were you know i think the the there was all this discourse about how far she was going to run behind david moody and she really didn't i mean it was very close between her margin and his margin so it's it is a huge missed opportunity that democrats didn't take the both of those races more seriously the race in louisiana obviously there were things that were left on the table i saw a funny tweet did you guys see this one where they were like you know republicans are really going to have to do some soul searching about all of the money that they spent in solid blue states like texas instead of focusing resources on swing states like mississippi and south carolina yeah yeah what were they thinking uh this final one from the roast beef experience yes voted against the republicans for the first time in 2020 years on tuesday i was more than a little worried the dems would take our displeasure with trump as a mandate for democratic policies and push their agenda after listening to the rocon interview i'm no longer worried now i'm hopeful for 28 if they're gonna use this as an opportunity to push for universal health care what makes you think they won't push for the same madness they've been supporting for the last 10 plus years can't wait for woke to 28 is gonna be lit well i think um sarota pointed to an important dynamic and i think that's a good point because i think that's a good point because i think that's and something that i've been talking about as well you previously because you had a lack of consensus or coherence on economic issues from the democratic caucus thanks to all these like pro-business chamber of commerce anti-union type democrats who were recruited and elected the area of agreement within the democratic party tended to be on social and cultural issues that's some at least of the focus went and that's part of how you end up with the brand that the democratic party has now now you have a reversal where a scott coloma mississippi is pro-life and pro-second amendment but on the economic issues you know he's very populist he's talking about billionaire class talking about affordability there is a very there is the common thread that runs through the new members in particular is that they're not going to be able to do what they want to do and they're this focus on ending the war severing the relationship with israel and delivering uh delivering material good for materially for the population so anything that's going to get done is likely to fall into those categories because that is where there is the greatest consensus among the people who have just been elected and also among the country among the democratic base as well yep all right uh well i think that's the best place for us to leave it here i will be uh taking a much uh reserved break after a major major week we want to thank everyone who signed up and supported breaking points during the live stream election night other than steve kornacki we were like the second most watched news politics live stream coverage on youtube in all of youtube and that's because of you amazing folks and we are just getting started there's a lot coming up over the next two years that we're very very excited about and um yeah we're going to be doing a lot we're going to be doing a lot of things and we're going to be doing a lot of things and we're going to be doing a lot of things and we're going to be doing a lot of things please wish saga and emily well from the blue log where they're trapped and uh saga is being forcefully injected with thc uh emily is uh also you know oh and do we have a last do we have a last send-off from the main character of this midterm election do we have a fine anything final to say from the michigan madre well as a woman i'm allowed to change my mind and it's not about any particular election but i'm just you know i just i would feel like you guys are too angry and it just upset me so that's all that's all you offended a lot of your friends any any response to the all the people that have been kind of reaching out to you and expressing how betrayed they felt it was worth it to please my sexy fiancee who can argue with that everybody if there's one thing outside of politics hold on to your sexy fiancee if you can um that matters more than politics um thank you all so much and we'll see you on monday bye-bye with chat gpt you can do more than get answers you can get things done whether you're leading a big project planning an elaborate trip or trying to balance work and life chat gpt can help give it a goal plus things like files notes or project plans develop a trip itinerary with daily updates or create a prioritized schedule so you can spend less energy sorting out the details and more in the future get started at chat gpt.com until now the data your ai depends on has been trapped behind ever increasing cloud fees wasabi created hot cloud storage and is redefining cloud storage for the ai era delivering simple predictable cloud storage for ai analytics media and more your data is 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Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Progressive candidates are winning in traditionally red districts by focusing on affordability, anti-oligarch messaging, and economic populism.
  2. Voters are rejecting elite politics and embracing class-based, issue-driven campaigns centered on working families and universal health care.
  3. The rise of new, unestablished candidates—many with no fundraising—signals a fundamental shift in political dynamics and voter power.
  4. AI-generated images and claims have been questioned, with reporters using AI for image editing, raising concerns about authenticity and journalistic integrity.
  5. The Democratic Party is facing internal pressure to deliver on progressive policy promises, especially on Israel, Iran, and healthcare.
  6. A major shift in state legislatures is occurring, with Democrats gaining significant supermajorities and breaking Republican trifectas.
  7. Political momentum is not just from policy but from public sentiment against war, wealth concentration, and corporate power.
  8. The 2026 midterm results suggest a new era of grassroots, populist democracy where ideological alignment trumps party loyalty.

Summary:

S. midterms marked a seismic shift in American politics, with progressive, economically populist candidates winning in deeply red districts. These new lawmakers—many unconnected to traditional party machinery—emphasized affordability, anti-oligarch policies, and universal healthcare, rejecting centrist or establishment narratives.

Key victories in states like Texas, Tennessee, and Ohio reflect a broad rejection of wealth-driven politics and a demand for tangible change. S. military support for Israel, and challenging elite power structures.

The wave also exposed serious issues in media credibility, as reports about high-profile events were questioned due to AI-generated imagery and lack of verification. Meanwhile, political institutions are being reshaped: Democrats gained 258 seats, breaking 11 Republican trifectas, and new leaders like Greta Neubauer signal a transformation in climate and social policy. The rise of grassroots, issue-based candidates reflects a broader political realignment, where voter demands for economic justice and accountability are redefining party platforms.

Even as the Democratic Party faces internal tensions over leadership and policy, the momentum suggests a new era of democratic engagement—one driven by public sentiment, not party loyalty.

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A major wave of progressive candidates has won in traditionally conservative districts, such as Trump-plus-10 seats, emphasizing affordability, anti-oligarch policies, and universal healthcare.

In 2006, red-to-blue Democrats were economically conservative and created policy incoherence. In 2024, many new winners are economically populist, aligning with progressive rhetoric on affordability and billionaires.

Tallarico won by focusing on anti-oligarch messaging, such as opposing billionaires and Elon Musk, which resonated with voters tired of political elite influence and affordability issues.

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